CLIENT:WeOwnTVPROJECT:Transmedia Website & Social CampaignDURATION:4 years

20k

unique visitors per month

274

personal stories shared

55%

of readers felt less isolated

Alzheimer’s is a brutal disease with far-reaching effects. WeOwnTV came to us for a transmedia component to their documentary to help ease the burden of Alzheimer’s across the community in a meaningful way after leaving the theater.

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Documentary expansion.

Director Banker White first approached One Net for a transmedia strategy that would involve an immersive, multi-platform campaign. He would soon be premiering his feature documentary, The Genius of Marian—a film exploring his experience with his mother’s early onset Alzheimer's.

A transmedia approach would help build a supportive community of people whose lives had been touched by Alzheimer’s and other caregiving-intensive disease.

Our Strategy

The Challenge:

A delicate delivery.

Given the subject matter of the film (Alzheimer’s disease) and its effect on the lives of everyone involved, the project needed to capture an inherently emotional, often complicated nature of the disease. And trying to capture that with an older audience who aren’t typically drawn to digital solutions would be a challenge.

We felt strongly that we needed to take a personal, non traditional approach. But before we knew what that approach could—or should—be, we needed more information. The biggest question on our minds was which audience we should target. Who was most in need of a supportive community? Was it the patients with Alzheimer’s? Their caregivers or health professionals? We needed to do some research.

The Research:

Getting to the source.

We wanted to dig deep into the hearts and minds of the diverse audiences to the film, The Genius of Marian. After all, when you’re working with a six figure budget, you want to make sure the final product is going to hit home and be successful.

We started with a paper test at the premiere of the documentary. Each person was given a beautifully designed card as they entered the theater and were asked to write down a memory they couldn’t live without. Cards were completed and handed back to us at the exit to gauge the emotional response of the various audiences. We also asked for their contact information so we could start to build our community.

The first thing that we noticed from the paper test was that the caregivers were most likely to participate and had the most sincere responses. But we didn't stop our research there. Next we organized further focus groups and outreach. We wanted to be absolutely sure that caregivers were the best audience for our project.

In the end, we came to the confident conclusion that the focus should be on caregivers. No one is ever prepared to become a caregiver. They often feel very isolated and there aren’t many support communities they can reach out to. Here we could make a difference.

The Direction:

Sharing is caring.

With a clear audience in mind, One Net started working closely with Banker White’s team to build and design an accompanying experience to his documentary. As with our approach to the research, we checked in with our audience every step of the way to make sure we were making something that they would actually love and use.

In the end, we decided a short, chaptered web series focusing on the experience of the caretaker within an interactive website would be the most impactful. This website became the Genius of Caring. If you visit the site, you’ll see questions injected between the video chapters asking a series of simple questions designed to help the viewer connect what they’re seeing with own experience. After going through all of the video chapters, we invite the viewer to create their own story by adding pictures and dialogue to the experience.

This was a big ask for caregivers to share such deep and personal experiences. The interface had to be beautiful, intuitive and most importantly, safe. To ensure the design and development continued to perfectly align with our caregiver audience, we organized small focus groups along the way. Banker White also hired Chris Riley, a dedicated outreach coordinator who would work with us to help onboard users and walk them through the process. She helped reach out to organizations to introduce them to our project.

Channels:

WEB + MOBILE

VIDEO

EMAIL CAMPAIGN

SOCIAL MEDIA

Our Solution

The Results

Community driven success.

Admitted to

2013

Sundance New Frontier Story Lab

Platform Success

20k+

unique website visitors per month.

45+

years of age demographic reached

274

personal stories shared on the website to date

Audience Engagement

70%

shared, or plan to share their story

26%

of viewers created their own story

51%

shared Genius of Caring content online

Audience Impact

67%

gained more insight on Alzheimer’s

55%

felt less isolated after reading about the experiences of others

51%

The Moral of the Story

The community builds on.

We didn’t stop there with the interactive website. To complement our efforts, we created an outreach campaign strategy. Monthly “Conversations” were developed, each one based on a particular theme tied to the questions in the video series experience. These conversations were deployed across social media platforms, inviting thoughts and comments from the Alzheimer's community to connect them to resources such as blogs, medical experts, Alzheimer’s advocates, subject thought-leaders and experienced caregivers. Our social media strategist spreads the message, while fresh new creative content (videos and photos) is posted regularly to the Genius of Caring’s social media channels.

How did the social campaign do?

425

visitors on average driven by social media to each “Conversation”

1/3

shared content across their own network

82

new signups per “Conversation”

“The statistics don't do justice to the impact this project had on the lives of isolated caregivers. One Net showed deliberate strategy and creativity in this transmedia piece and it really expanded our story world to engage new audiences. We can’t wait to work with them again!”